A LinkedIn discussion about “crossover” financing rounds deepened my sense that we’re not all saying the same thing when we’re saying the same thing. And that’s a challenge, if not necessarily always a problem, in an industry that’s only becoming more scientifically and financially complex as it matures. Because to understand one another and avoid unnecessary hiccups it helps to have a common language.

Our usual top-down biotech sector metrics showed that 1H24 was… pretty boring (though for us bottom-up folks, individual companies offer plenty of excitement). After the last few years, boring ain’t bad. With expectations of Fed easing interest rates due to waning inflation, the excitement level for the second half of the year has already picked up, but that’s not reflected in the metrics here.

A year ago we published the first “Semper Maior” piece, making the case that biotech was on firm ground and ready for a reboot. We put out the second piece last summer, when it felt like the rebound was underway. Had the year ended in October or even November… well, you know. But here we are after a general market and XBI surge feeling like biotech is now truly recovering from its prolonged downturn. So let’s mine the data, as we have before, to get a sense of what happened in 2023 and what lessons to take with us into 2024.

In today’s FutureCast discussion, RA’s Raj Shah, Jake Simson, Tess Cameron, and Peter Kolchinsky revisit one of our most talked-about articles: Time to Reboot Biotech. Fresh financial analysis and actionable board room advice abound.

We’ve suffered a protracted downturn in general interest in biotech. That downturn has been compounded by rising interest rates undercutting equities in general. Now we must determine 1) how much worse this downturn might be and 2) how we’ll do things differently once we reboot. Here, Peter Kolchinsky explains why he believes we’ve emerged from the downturn but must reboot biotech with more honest and efficient processes and better defend our industry’s value proposition to policymakers and the public.

2020 and 2021 were the heyday for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. We got in on the act ourselves – twice! – and we’ve learned a lot about why SPACs can sometimes work for a biotech in very particular circumstances, but also why mostly they don’t. We would also note that in certain market conditions, chasing merger targets with a SPAC can be extremely challenging. So we pulled the plug on our second SPAC. Here’s the story.

Biotech board members and management teams are increasingly asking how their companies can benefit from what RA Capital and others call a “Series I” IPO process (also known as a data-driven or logic-based IPO). Here we’ve compiled common questions and answers.